The Shower Diva: Where Fun Reigns!

Scrapbooking Expert Jeni Pullen on Sharing Memories at Showers

Expert scrapper and co-owner of Scrappin' Getaway, Jeni Pullen shares ideas for including guests in the fun while you memorialize your shower!

Scrapbooking not only helps preserve memories, it encourages people to visit and bond. Making a scrapbook during your shower is an excellent way to involve guests in creating a personal, handmade keepsake for the Guest of Honor while providing everyone with a fun shared experience during your special occasion.

Scrapbooking activities offer something for everyone:

• Hostesses are able to help “break the ice” and foster conversation among guests who have just met.
• Guests have a chance to give the Guest of Honor something completely unique and from the heart, even if they’ve never crafted anything before.
• The Guest of Honor receives a one-of-a-kind memory book filled with personal messages from her dear friends.

The basic plan is simple. As the hostess, you will provide table of supplies. Each guest will create one page for the Guest of Honor. At the end of the shower, you will bind the pages and present the Guest of Honor with her scrapbook.

Set yourself up for success by planning ahead so it’s easy for each guest to complete their scrapbook page within a few minutes.

Supplies You’ll Need.
Once you’ve decided on a theme for your shower, head out to your local craft store to pick up some coordinating scrapbook supplies. Make sure you stock up on:

• Adhesive: Avoid glue sticks, even those advertised as “super-hold” have a limited lifespan. You don’t want your scrapbook to fall apart after a few months. Also avoid paste, rubber cement, and any other type of adhesive that is not specifically recommended for scrapbooking. Some products contain acid and lignin that will destroy your scrapbooking paper and photographs over time.
• A paper trimmer of any sort—the type sold in office supply stores works just fine.
• Pens so people can write personal messages in the album. Avoid Sharpie® pens. Again, you’re looking for something acid-free. Craft stores sell pens specifically for scrapbooking in a rainbow of colors.
• Scissors, both plain and decorative.
• Assorted ribbon that matches your color theme.
• Solid and patterned card stock and paper. Remember the “acid free” rule and avoid newspaper, it will ruin your photos over time! If you want to include a clipping of your Guest of Honor’s engagement announcement or similar newspaper items, use archival spray on the newspaper to remove the acids or slip the newspaper clipping into a plastic sleeve.
• Embellishments such as buttons, stickers, googly eyes, felt or paper flowers, brads, eyelets, and other assorted doo dads and thingamagigs. Craft stores now sell sets of embellishments, which make it very easy for everyone to create a nice looking album page. (Note from The Shower Diva: This is especially true for beginners when so many options can feel overwhelming, to have a uniformed package is a great way to begin your scrapbooking experience!)
• Punches, patterns, circle-cutters and other tools for creating shapes.
• A ready-made album cover or supplies to make and bind your pages into an album.
• If you have a digital camera and photo printer, you can print snapshots of the shower on the fly and mount them into your album before you give it to the Guest of Honor. If you don’t, simply leave space on each page so the Guest of Honor can add her favorite photos later.

Precut so Your Guests are Free to Have Fun
Precut your scrapbook pages to the correct size for your album. Precut your photo mats and some scrap pieces in various sizes for guest to punch and tear to decorate their page. The more precutting you have done ahead of time, the easier it will be for guests during the party.

Download this free scrapbooking template on how to maximize your 12x12 scrapbooking paper, compliments of Scrappin' Getaway!

Post a Few Samples
Put together a few finished pages to serve as samples for guests, or post a few ideas from scrapbooking albums to stimulate imagination and creativity. Just don’t overload your guests with ideas or they will become bogged down thinking about creating their page instead of actually making one. Three to six sample pages should be plenty.

Ask an Experienced Scrapbooker to Host the Table
If you have a friend who is familiar with scrapbooking and willing to take charge of the scrapbook table, it will help a lot, as you are sure to have a few guests who have never tried scrapbooking before. If not, see if there is a scrapbooking service in your area. You’ll also want to recruit a friend or two to mingle with the guests, make sure they know about the scrapbooking table, and encourage guests to participate.

It’s smart to have a checklist of guests so the scrapbooking hostess can keep track of who has completed their album page. Once all the guests have contributed a page, bind the album and gift it to your Guest of Honor.

Consider Surprising Your Guest of Honor
If you have room, consider setting up the scrapbooking table out of site of the Guest of Honor. Explain to your guests that you will be surprising the Guest of Honor with the memory album at the end of the shower and enlist their help in keeping her away from the table. Make sure someone is at hand to snap the Guest of Honor’s photo when she receives this heartfelt gift from all her friends at the shower.

Invite Out-of-Town Friends and Family to Participate
Does your Guest of Honor have dear friends or close family that live out of town and can’t attend your shower? Ask them to prepare a scrapbook page and mail it to you before the shower. You can either send them printed instructions with the size of paper to use, shower theme, and suggested colors; or, mail a package of supplies they can assemble. Make sure you coordinate this several weeks before the shower so people have time to create their page and return it in the mail. Imagine the look on your Guest of Honor’s face when she sees greetings from afar in her album!

Keep it Fun!
Some guests might worry that they “can’t” scrapbook or “aren’t creative.” Reassure them that everything has been set up to make this very easy, so there’s no experience level required, and there’s no “right” or “wrong” way for them to decorate a page. Creating a memory book is very personal and subjective. Whatever a guest decides to put on their page will be perfect because it is a unique expression of their friendship and regard for the guest of honor. Some guests may only want to write a personal message on a premade page. That’s fine. Have a few pages decorated and ready to go for just that purpose. Others, who are more familiar with scrapbooking and collage, may want to get fancier. That’s great too!

Two Tips for Creating Beautiful Scrapbook Pages
You might want to post these tips prominently next to your scrapbooking table:

1. Less is more. Don’t over think your design or over clutter your page. Use a photo, poem, or personal note as your focal point and add a few embellishments that won’t detract viewers from that focal point.
2. Scrap with your heart, not with your head. There will always be someone who decorates their page differently than you do and you might be tempted to think they’ve done a “better” job, but that’s not possible. Every page is personal and the guest of honor will love your page because it’s a unique expression of you and the friendship she shares with you.

There are Lots More Tips on the Web
If you’re excited to get started, you’ll find more ideas on the Internet. If you’re an experienced scrapbooker, share your best ideas at DivaDarlings.NET. We’d love to hear from you!

About Jeni Pullen
Scrapbooking has been Jeni Pullen’s passion for 16 years. A few years ago, Jeni joined Laura Kirby to start Scrappin’ Getaway. Based in Portland, Oregon, Scrappin’ Getaway specializes in organizing retreats for women who want to haul their scrapbooking projects out of the closet and spend some girl time creating together. In addition to hosting custom retreats and parties, Jeni and Laura teach scrapbooking classes and scrapbook for hire.